High-throughput phenotypic assay to screen for anthelmintic activity on Haemonchus contortus
Details
Publication Year 2021-06-26,Volume 14,Issue #7,Page 616
Journal Title
Pharmaceuticals
Abstract
Parasitic worms cause very significant diseases in animals and humans worldwide, and their control is critical to enhance health, well-being and productivity. Due to widespread drug resistance in many parasitic worms of animals globally, there is a major, continuing demand for the discovery and development of anthelmintic drugs for use to control these worms. Here, we established a practical, cost-effective and semi-automated high throughput screening (HTS) assay, which relies on the measurement of motility of larvae of the barber's pole worm (Haemonchus contortus) using infrared light-interference. Using this assay, we screened 80,500 small molecules and achieved a hit rate of 0.05%. We identified three small molecules that reproducibly inhibited larval motility and/or development (IC(50) values of ~4 to 41 µM). Future work will critically assess the potential of selected hits as candidates for subsequent optimisation or repurposing against parasitic nematodes. This HTS assay has a major advantage over most previous assays in that it achieves a ≥ 10-times higher throughput (i.e., 10,000 compounds per week), and is thus suited to the screening of libraries of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of compounds for subsequent hit-to-lead optimisation or effective repurposing and development. The current assay should be adaptable to many socioeconomically important parasitic nematodes, including those that cause neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). This aspect is of relevance, given the goals of the World Health Organization (WHO) Roadmap for NTDs 2021-2030, to develop more effective drugs and drug combinations to improve patient outcomes and circumvent the ineffectiveness of some current anthelmintic drugs and possible drug resistance.
Publisher
MDPI
Keywords
Haemonchus contortus; high throughput screening (HTS); infrared light-interference; motility; parasitic nematode; phenotypic assay
Research Division(s)
Chemical Biology
PubMed ID
34206910
Open Access at Publisher's Site
https://doi.org/10.3390/ph14070616
Terms of Use/Rights Notice
Refer to copyright notice on published article.


Creation Date: 2021-07-20 11:18:16
Last Modified: 2021-07-20 02:23:07
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